Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Wednesday (today as most of you read this) 25 January from 1-2:30 in HPS in the basement is our first CamPoS talk of the Lent term, with Cambridge's own Stephen John talking on ‘Wishful Speaking: Science, Truth and Dictatorship’. His abstract reads:
‘In 1948 a meeting at the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences decided that Michurinism - an account of epigenetic inheritance more commonly known as Lysenkoism - was preferable to Mendelianism, with significant implications for teaching and research. Many treat the Lysenko affair as a paradigmatic example of how politics and science should not relate. How, though, should we characterise this case, given recent claims that scientific justification cannot or should not be "value-free"? This paper investigates these issues, arguing that concerns over "wishful speaking" - rather than the more familiar "wishful thinking" - should be central to our thinking about the proper relationship between political institutions and scientific practice.’ Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge [email protected] Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
